Just because Halloween is over, does not mean we are yet free of the truly terrifying.

Existential dread often comes packaged in the yuletide persuasion as well

With Spoopy season behind us, I tip my hat to all of the ghouls and ghosts that made our time together a truly frightful endeavor. As I look forward to all of the non-horrifying games in my near future, there was a last minute title I ended up trying that belonged to the survival horror genre, though it turned out to be quite the odd duck, once I got my hands on it. The game also made me ponder about a great many elements involved with what is “enough” in terms of what a game conceptually offers vs the actuality, or at least the context surrounding the title, in how perception helps to divine the truth of the matter.

The game is called My Friendly Neighborhood (MFN), and the elevator pitch is essentially “A Resident Evil game set on Sesame Street”, which is a great encapsulation of what the theory behind the game is, but the execution of what MFN brings to the table, leaves one wanting far more than what it delivers. Just as a quick reminder to any new readers on the site, I don’t generally tend to do traditional previews or reviews per se, so when I’m discussing a title, it is in no way striving to do so in a normative way, often times spiraling far out of control and diving into abstract concepts inspired with my time with the title, so fair warning.

I think one of the interesting ideas that was generated within me when I started MFN, and one that I’m not sure I still have an answer to is involved with the notion “I’m not as big of a fan of this game that I’d like to be.” Obviously, there is a lot to unpack there, and what further complicates matters is that you’d think there would be some real world reason of personal aside I have in reference to why I want to give this game more praise then I am able to, or why I want to see it succeed, but I had never even heard of MFN before I downloaded it, so the source of this notionality is one I desire to find the meaning behind still as of this writing.

In any case, MFN being “a Resident Evil set on Sesame Street” should really give you all you need to know about how the game functions, as it is survival horror, it does involve a broadcast television show based around Muppet like individuals, and it is about as absurd as it sounds. The main character Gordon, who is some kind of repair technician, is sent to fix the satellite of a location station, that is transmitting episodes of MFN, which are interrupting the local news. broadcast However, as soon as Gordon arrives, he realizes this is not going to be as straight forward a repair job as he initially thought it would be.

The game is in first person, unlike a lot of RE games, but it borrows heavily from the first RE as source material, from dedicated “safe rooms” with limited save points, a chest in which to store inventory, even door animations to signify the transition between rooms, MFN is heavy on the nods to RE. Having said that, the voice acting is no where near as corny as the original RE’s was, so it’s not a total cornball B movie like the the first RE was, with everything being on the up and up in terms of where line delivery and writing is concerned. You might notice I am referencing the first RE quite a bit here, and there is a reason for that. Acknowledging full well the RE series has come a long way in the last three decades, offering up a load of gameplay developments and progress for the series overall, MFN is very much in the vein of recreating a survival horror game from the late 90’s, for better or worse, as the gameplay systems are extremely limited as a result of this.

Due to the game being heavily predicated on systems reminiscent of the first RE, a lot of the minute to minute gameplay is quite basic. The environments are fairly claustrophobic, there is no jump button, which seems far more jarring in this environment than the Arklay Mansion (RE), and you of course must dispatch of this games version of zombies, which are slow moving Muppets. I guess it’s fair to say they’re really more like people in Muppet suits, as they are full bodied, bipedal entities, and not as if there is a human fully exposed with their hand moving the aggressor independently of themselves, which would have been true madness unbound. The game gets around the violence angle, possibly also as a meta-explanation as to why realistically speaking, Gordon doesn’t just start straight up murdering folk who are aggressively attacking him on a TV set, by having the game equip him with a toy gun of sorts he finds at the TV station called the Stenographer, which fires pieces of paper with letters written on them, of which you may fire at your antagonizing Muppet foes. This knocks them out temporarily, but unless you have some duct tape handy and restrict them before leaving the room, they’ll be up and walking around again by the time you reload the area. And just like in RE, there are both specially designed keys one has to collect to progress, and puzzles of varying sorts for one to solve, in order to unlock key items, in order to help the player unravel the mystery, while trying to stay alive.

I don’t normally feel the need to explain basic game design as much as I did here, but I felt the need since this was such a relatively unknown title, it was important to lay ground work on what kind of odd duck we were dealing with. It goes without saying, that since the game is dealing with taking out Muppets on a sound stage as opposed to zombies in a dimly lit Mansion, the game doesn’t come off as literally scary, more so leaning into a warped sense of dark humor as the entire scenario is obviously insane in premise. I think, an underlying sense of horror comes from the reality of what the player is interacting with, as in, if one truly considered what was going on in the game, and found themselves in a similar scenario in real life, it would probably be far more batshit insanely terrifying to have to deal with, so imagination goes a long way here. As it stands more so in the literal moment to moment, it does come off as more of an off the wall wackiness, with underlying tones of disturbingly psychotic, so I think a lot of how people may react will be equidistant from their own set of phobias in regards to the subject material.

I think it’s worth it to mention that I only put an hour into MFN, it was enough time to get to a pseudo faux ending, very much in the style of the Far Cry games, where MFN allows for Gordon to just say fuck this, get in his truck, and just straight up leave instead of solving the mystery and getting his job done, which I did enjoy quite a bit. So, I’m guessing there is a decent chunk of game I have not see as of yet, and perhaps some of the more macabre and disturbing elements of what may lay in store for the player awaits beyond this point, but the first hour did at least give me a sense of what the baseline for the game is likely to be, which is enough to make some fair judgement calls.

So I think this is the moment where I discuss the notion of “Why I’m not as big of a fan of this game as I’d like to be”, as it really does boil down to theory vs execution, with a game that had tons of fun ideas, that just doesn’t really get them off the page and onto the screen in a satisfying manner. And, my aim is never in a desire to be belittling of a dev team, but there are sometimes just sharp realities one has to deal with when breaking down a title. To that point, I think full stop, the game feels like a beta version of what they eventually wanted to release, in the form of a totally polished title, as the whole experience just kind of lacks some oomph to it. One of the biggest underlying points that becomes a make or break is the sound design, and how much heavy lifting that does for games in general, but especially for survival horror titles. While it’s hard for me to say emphatically, whether or not the devs wanted this game to come off as over the top hilarious, or unsettlingly creepy I do not know. I would say from what I’ve seen thus far, MFN doesn’t really do either with amazing levels of panache, which leaves it in kind of a no man’s land of intent, to the point that if it’s trying to lean into scary, it lacks a greater fear factor to it, and if it’s going for over the top absurdity, it lacks a certain hilarity to pull it off. Both elements kind of work in tandem, but it leaves the entire experience feeling luke warm as a result.

Gameplay wise, it is fairly straight forward. The gunplay is similarly underwhelming in regards to the themes mentioned with both tone and audio design, so it lacks a punch while not being totally bereft of quality. The environmental puzzles work, without being overly compelling, and on default difficulty, everything feels understandably fair. I don’t know if the game has the equivalent of bosses, as mentioned prior, I got the easiest “joke” ending after an hour, so maybe the game really ramps up and I opted out right as the going gets good. I would be delightfully surprised if MFN ends up just exploding with ambition after my stopping point, however.

In essence, MFN is kind of a paradox, as it possesses a simulatenity of elements, both being ludicrous in premise, and then totally whelming in actuality. Maybe now that I’ve described the conceptual essence of the title vs the blasé realism of what it ends up delivering, the description may help you in understanding why there is a much bigger fan, theoretically speaking, tucked deep down within me of this game, that is being smothered by the unfortunate actuality of what MFN ends up in fact being at the end of the day. With a lot more polish and time to add more production value to the game, you’d see a transformed experience, but as it stands, it comes off as an undercooked beta just screaming for more time in the developers oven.

-Pashford